


(he never listens)

by bathandbodyworks



Series: Renegades of Legend [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe- Superpowers, Angst, Emotional Hurt, Flashbacks, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Mutants, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Torture, Vomiting, powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 18:31:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17493068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bathandbodyworks/pseuds/bathandbodyworks
Summary: “I’m sorry it was so painful.”Dick realizes saving everyone he loves only hurts him in the end.





	(he never listens)

**Author's Note:**

> here’s another part!!! This is a bit darker than the other works in this series, by the way.

Everything’s flashing through his mind, memories and feelings, repressed and unrestrained, and it’s blurring and ripping and melting and he’s so lost and he’s—

%%%

It’s hard to breathe when everything is _pulsing_ like this, when everything is swimming violently and oozing color and blending into a mass of feelings and building and building and building until they _pop_ , only he still can’t breathe with how much it hurts, and his face is too warm but his arms are bitterly cold, and he feels sticky and sweaty, and somehow dry and gross all in one, endless moment that seems to go on forever, no matter how long and hard he begs and pleads to whoever’s watching him. 

But no one’s listening, no one’s making it not hurt, no one’s making him feel okay, no one’s helping him, and he doesn’t know if anyone ever will, not when everything in him is burning, burning, burning to heaven and hell and back again. 

And he’s only here because he fucked up, he fucked up so bad, and now—

%%%

Bruce told him Blüdhaven was a bad idea, but there he goes again, being a goddamn idiot, not listening (he never listens) to the one person who ever actually looked out for him. 

His apartment is small and bare, and he keeps a pile of gloves on the floor beside the mattress he sleeps on, and he shoves them on his mutilated hands before leaving his shitty apartment to go to his even shittier job.

And when he gets there no one says hi, and maybe it’s because of the bags under his brilliant eyes, or maybe it’s the tangled, knotted mess of his hair, or maybe it’s the small, awkward smile he keeps accidentally sending out, but it’s not his fault. It’s maybe because he’s always shaking, terrified that’s he’s going to have an attack. 

He’s holding something in. Maybe it’s the poison, maybe it’s his feelings, maybe it’s everything, but he’s shaking, terrified of hurting strangers that don’t even talk to him. 

%%%

His hands are cuffed in front of him, bound in layers and layers of dangerously cold metal, and he can’t get out, there’s always _more metal_ , and he’s using every trick he knows, but he can’t get out, he can’t get out. 

He closes his eyes, focusing everything in him to shove poison out of his hands, but they’re always there, tying him tighter to the point where his shaking reverberates down the chains instead of out, and they just wrap more metal around his hands, never letting him do anything. 

He slams the manacles down, and someone’s coming up behind him, but he can’t turn his head around, he’s tied too tight, can only hear the click of their solid shoes as someone—

%%%

Tim- Tim he was talking to Tim, _where’s Tim_ —

%%%

Damian’s one of those people that’s hard to swallow, even harder to try to drink in the first place. 

But he’s growing on him, just like a mold, albeit an adorable, slightly murderous, angry mold that makes him smile when just being alive is hard, when he feels like a curse, when he feels useless and upset. He’s endearing in a way Dick can’t quite describe. 

He holds his arms out wide, and watches as Damian turns his head to the side, a small smile hidden under the downward curve of his lips. 

%%%

Jason keeps yelling, louder and louder, about how he’s sorry, how he should’ve stopped, how he doesn’t want to die, all while tied up on the ground and staring into the camera, covered in blood and bruises in front of that fucking painted-face maniac. 

Dick rewinds the tape, again and again, because people don’t come back from being beaten and blown up by psychotic clowns, but maybe he can pretend like it hasn’t happened yet if he stops the video before the dynamite is ignited, and everything will be okay and maybe Jason won’t be dead.

He always stops before the part where water starts pouring from Jason’s hands in a desperate attempt to stop the dynamite, because it all just means _nothing_. 

%%%

They’re coming at him with sticks, almost like cattle prods, maybe because that’s all he is to them, a fucking piece of meat, and they’re forcing him to comply, to stay their lab rat so they can get what they want. 

“No, no, please- nononono,” he’s pushing himself against the table, and the sticks are getting closer and closer until his back is arching as sharp, white pain laces up his spine and through his brain and he can’t even remember what’s going on until he sees the men in white lab coats staring at the clear liquid coating his hands, carefully not touching it. 

He’s panting, he can’t do it again, he won’t survive another shock, but the sticks are getting closer and closer until his back is arching as sharp, white—

%%%

He’s dropping from his leap, rolling to relieve pressure, and he’s up and running again. 

He’s not letting Bruce and Tim fight Penguin and Riddler without him, even if his experience in the crime-fighting world is admittedly limited, but he’s determined to help. 

He races faster, relishing in the seconds he’s in the air before he’s rolling onto the next rooftop, heart dropping in his chest everytime he feels his back graze the top of a roof. 

He’s gotta get there, they’ll need his help, need what he has to offer, but suddenly there’s a voice in his ear, and he slows to a stop when he hears what it says. They don’t need him anymore, he’s too late, and the situation should be dealt with in just a couple of minutes.

He sighs, rubbing his spandex-covered hand across his spandex-covered back, and takes off running again (he never listens).

%%%

He’s working on his superhero persona, and he might have left the comfort of Bruce’s money angrily, but he’s willing to let the man foot that particular bill –who he knows is only doing it out of some misplaced sense of justice– but nothing else. He doesn’t _need_ someone to do everything for him. He’s never been independent in his entire life, and he needs the sense of freedom, the feeling of pushing back, the knowledge that he’s making change for once. 

He’s thinking of taking on his mother’s name for him as his moniker. It feels right to honor her, but she was always surrounded by people and family and loved ones. And right now, he’s feeling all alone. 

%%% 

Bruce is angry at him for what he said to Jason. 

Jason is angry at him for what he said to Jason. 

Everyone’s angry at him. Nothing feels fair when Jason gets a vigilante persona before him, so yeah, he means it when he says _Fuck Redbird._ Nothing’s feels fair when he knows acid can shoot from his hands. Nothing ever feels fair (he never listens).

%%%

Everything is spinning, around and around, and it’s hard to remember what’s going on, _who is he kidding, it’s hard to remember his fucking name,_ and all he knows is the poison that leaks from his hands, and white, blinding pain and scientists wearing lab coats that used to be a solid color. 

His mind goes up and down, flipping and flopping, and everything swirls in brutal colors until these people get what they want, and all they want is what he makes, and why him, why—

%%%

His new bed is bigger than his entire trailer was. This is ‘problem that isn’t actually a problem’ number one. 

The training room is wider than the entire circus grounds were. This is ‘problem that isn’t actually a problem’ number two. 

Bruce Wayne is taller than his dad ever was. This is ‘problem that is actually a problem, and also the reason he’s currently sobbing in his foster father’s arms’ number one. 

His face is buried in Bruce’s shoulders, impossibly wide and impossibly looming, when everything Dick can feel starts to shake and he shoves himself off, falling on his ass in his haste to get away. 

Everything’s vibrating, and his head is pounding away, a pulse at a time, and Bruce is looking right at him and now he’s going to send him back to the juvenile detention center for bad little boys, or to wherever they’re sending illegal superhumans these days. 

He can hear the floor under his hand melt away slowly, but he can’t take his eyes off of Bruce’s face. 

His stony expression is unreadable, and Dick can’t stop sobbing on the floor. 

Bruce doesn’t move, and Dick holds his hands out in front of him, not knowing where to wipe them, even if the carpet all around his body is already blackened and burnt. 

Bruce finally steps forward, a small, bat-shaped object in hand. 

%%%

He’s flipping through Damian’s drawings, he misses him, he misses him so much it hurts, he just wants to hug him one more time, just one more chance.

%%%

They’re collecting bottles of it, now. The poison his body leaks is getting stored in the one kind of metal in the world they learned he can’t melt away. 

They still don’t stop. They shock, and collect. Shock and collect. Shock and collect.

They finally feed him, and only through an IV tube, when he’s so tired he can barely scream, and even then, just enough to keep him weak. Like he’s ever been strong anyway. 

They tell him they wouldn’t have to do this if he gave it to them willingly. He knows they’re liars, lying, disgusting, dirty liars, but even if he wanted to, he couldn’t (he never listens).

They just keep shocking and collecting. Shocking and collecting. Shocking and collecting. Shocking and—

%%%

He’s pushing Jason to the side, his mouth cracked open into a smile, pure and unaffected by anything else. 

Jason just keeps laughing, and it’s a deep rumble with just a hint of a higher pitch along its edges. He can’t help but love it, and he doesn’t think he ever wants it to end. 

Jason hits him back, harder than Dick hit him, and Dick might almost be angry if Jason didn’t keep laughing; and Dick could die happy, listening to the sweet sound of Jason’s laughter.

%%%

He just wants to go to sleep, it’s so hard to sleep, he can’t stop thinking and breathing and living, he just wants one goddamn night of rest _Tim, please, Tim, please just let me sleep._

But Tim’s got that far off kind of look in his eyes, likes he wants to cry but some hole in him isn’t quite empty enough, or maybe he’s just trying to tune Dick’s voice out, and he can’t blame him. 

He’s tired of himself, too. 

Tim pulls his hand back everytime he gets close, and he won’t make Tim use his powers, he knows what it’s like to be forced to do things you don’t want to do, and Tim doesn’t deserve it, but all he wants is one goddamn night of rest, and _Tim, please, Tim, please just let me sleep._

%%%

It’s all over him, and he’s so much more naked than the day he was born. They barely have to shock him anymore to get to the poison; it won’t stop pouring out of him. 

All he does is lay on the table, his entire body shaking and convulsing and barely feeling as the ‘scientists’ suck the acid off his body with their weird metal tubes and put the acid into their weird metal containers so they can do god knows what. 

Maybe they’ll take it and burn through locks. Maybe they’ll take it and melt machine guns. Maybe they’ll take it and wipe clean from the earth their enemies, him included. 

He just wants it to stop so that every second he breathes isn’t the most painful moment of his life. He just wants to be normal so that he doesn’t have to be tied to a table wishing for everything to end. He just wants to go home, except it’s hard to remember where that is when everything is shaking and spinning and—

%%%

Damian’s sprinting down the length of the batcave, arms outstretched, looking younger than Dick ever thought was possible. 

He’s jumping into his outstretched arms, and he spins him around as Damian squeezes his neck, and Damian’s muttering into his shoulder, and Dick hears it like it’s the only noise in the world. 

“You idiot,” he mutters as Dick spins, lowering him to the ground, neither wanting to let go. “You idiot.”

%%%

Tim’s standing there, nervous but somehow overwhelmingly confident, and Dick knows his mouth is wide open and he’s gaping like a fish out of water, but he can barely believe the sight in front of him. 

Everything’s built up to this beautiful, perfect moment. It’s Tim, wearing the suit he and Alfred designed, his moniker given to him by Dick. 

The green of his Kevlar tights is bold, but the symbol on his chest is even bolder. 

The first Robin. Tim Drake.

Dick doesn’t know what the media will call the kid. Metahuman. Mutant. Phenomena. Inhuman. Monster. Enhanced. 

He’ll just call him a hero. 

He owes Tim this, after what he didn’t do for Jason. 

%%%

There’s an alarm blaring across the bottom of his TV screen. 

**Warning. Extreme Metahuman activity in central Blüdhaven. Please stay indoors. Do not leave until the All-Clear message has been given.**

Dick swallows. Metahuman? 

He walks towards the closet in his bedroom, and pushes the button that leads to the Nightwing bunker, his eyes locked firmly in front of him.

%%%

It’s warm, it’s so warm, he hasn’t been this warm in so long, he’s so confused, what’s even happening, why does he feel like fire, why is he still here, he’s so warm, so warm—

%%%

Bruce’s words won’t stop echoing around and around and around his head like a curse. He wants to leave the manor, he wants to live his own life, he’s so tired of being coddled. 

He wants to be a vigilante. He wants a lot of things, and he never seems to deserve them (he never listens).

 

_______________

 

He feels his eyes open slowly, and then flutter shut. It’s so _warm_ , like he’s sleeping next to a furnace, and he feels sticky and sweaty and gross. 

His head hurts, like his mind just got stomped on and is currently being spun in circles. 

He lifts his hands up to grip his head, and snaps his eyes open as best he can when his arms barely budge. 

He can barely turn his head, and it’s then that he realizes there’s something distinct in the air. It’s strong, and he knows that smell like he knows the back of his hand. 

It’s flesh. Burned human fucking flesh. 

It’s metallic and sulphuric and rancid, and also terrible and musky and nauseating, and also putrid and rich and leathery, and it’s the one smell that’ll never leave him, the one thing that’d probably stick with him if he lost every memory that made him him, and it’s surrounding his body, digging into him like a claw, just to laugh in his face. 

He starts thrashing in the bonds strapping him to a fucking table, and it’s so hard to breathe, and he can just barely make out one of the scientist’s arms in his vision, and it’s bent at an angle, forever stuck straight upward, and it’s so black and burnt and shit– he’s gonna throw up, he’s gonna—

his eyes squeeze shut as he vomits, except he can barely move his head forward, and certainly not to the side, and it lands all over his chest and neck before he’s coughing, choking on his own throw up, and it’s so fucking stupid that he’s going to die _choking on his own fucking vomit_ after everything he’s lived through, that he swallows it, before throwing it right back up onto his naked chest. 

Tears leak from his eyes, and he’s so tired, and he can see little circular burn marks all over his body, and he can barely move, everything hurts so much and it’s so warm, and holy shit, he just killed so many people and he’s never getting out of here. 

Dick swallows, and it stings and is bitter, and the words gets caught in his throat. His voice comes out so hoarse, his throat so dry, it barely even sounds like him when he cries out. “I– someone? Is anyone…I’m in here, and-and they’re hurt, please help…”

He coughs, and it hurts his head and his chest and his throat, and the smell is fucking shoving it’s way down his throat, he can taste it, and he starts sobbing as he calls out again. “Bruce… someone, please. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I–“ he chokes on his spit, and coughs again.

The poison starts leaking out of his hands, and it’s not melting through the restraints, and somehow that only makes things worse, the one reason he’s here not even doing shit for him, never helping him, it’s never his fucking savior, never there when he needs it, and he can’t help but resume his calling out even though he knows no one can hear him.

Everyone who could help him, if they even wanted to, he burnt to a crisp with his acid entirely on accident, and oh god, he doesn’t even know where he is. He deserves to rot in jail for the rest of his life after this, if he ever gets out. They might’ve hurt and tortured him, but he _murdered_ them, and now he’s a killer who deserves to die alone on a table surrounded by his victims. 

He feels vomit build in his throat, but there’s almost nothing in his stomach, and all that comes up is yellow bile that slowly drools out of his mouth. 

“Please… there’s people, they need help… anyone,” Dick pushes through his throat, his voice cracking dryly. 

Dick closes his eyes. He wants water, in his throat and on his body. He wants Tim to hold his hand. He wants Damian to come back from being stabbed to death. He wants Jason to recover from being blown up. 

He wants Bruce to make things not hurt so much.

He wants to live in a world where things are okay, where Bruce can’t make things out of pain, where he doesn’t make acid, where Jason didn’t control water, where Tim doesn’t put people to sleep, where Damian couldn’t make art come to life. 

He wants to live in a world where Bruce isn’t about to lose another superpowered kid, where he’s not about to die, where Jason never gets blown up, where Tim actually gets some sleep, where Damian’s mother doesn’t stab her son to death.

He misses everyone so much, and he doesn't even notices as Batman slips into his cell. 

Dick doesn’t notice till Batman is directly above him and ripping back his cowl, and now he can’t help but think about all the unimportant things. His head hurts. He feels gross. He’s tired.

“I’m not losing another one of you,” Batman’s voice whispers from far away (he listens this time).

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this wasn’t too confusing and that you enjoyed!!! 
> 
> okay, so, that kinda didn’t go in the direction I was thinking when I set out to write this. so things are a little bit different here in this powered universe. Jason and Damian are like permanently dead. Jason was the first sidekick, redbird, (even though Dick is older and lived with Bruce at an earlier point) and when he died Tim became Robin with Dick’s help. Tim eventually became the second Redbird when Damian showed up, and Damian became the second Robin. 
> 
> If you’ve read the second work in this series, then you might remember Dick and Damian living in the penthouse, which happened because Bruce was off living his best life undercover for a while. 
> 
> this is before Cass shows up, so yeah. 
> 
> feel free to leave comments and/or kudos!!!


End file.
